One huge drawback of going solar is the fact that it only makes sense in areas which get abundant sunshine year-round. However, a team of scientists from China has now come up with a new solar cell, which can harvest energy even when it’s raining. (more…)

As you’re probably already aware, perovskite solar cells have the greatest potential of being the most prominent source of solar energy in the near future. They’re cheap to make and flexible enough to be applied to most any surface.(more…)

Breakthroughs big and small are important in the quest towards greater reliance on renewable power, of which solar power is at the top of the list. And one such breakthrough was recently achieved by a team of scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) in Germany. Inspired by the rose’s ability to convert sunlight into energy they designed a film that greatly increases the efficiency of solar cells. (more…)

A lot of effort has gone into developing transparent solar cells lately, since they could be attached to windows easily with no loss of light. But CSEM, a Swiss non-profit technology company, has now developed white solar cells, which can easily be integrated into a building’s walls.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have come up with a new kind of spray-on colloidal quantum dots (CQD), which is a breakthrough in the field as it doesn’t bind with oxygen atoms. The later is a problem with CQD as it causes some dots to forgo their electrons and become useless. Tests of this new method revealed a solar efficiency of eight percent, which may be low compared to other technologies, but the researchers are still hopeful their method will prove very useful.

Harvesting solar energy is a great way to generate sustainable power, but unfortunately solar cells are far from being as efficient as they might be. Currently, commercially available solar cells can convert about 25 percent of sunlight into electricity, and scientists have been trying to create better solar cells for years. One milestone they have been unsuccessfully trying to reach is 50 percent conversion efficiency of solar cells. However, the start-up company Semprius might be on the right track with the stacking technique of solar cells they recently developed.(more…)